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THE FIRST HORROR 
OF THE WAR 



BY 

S. A. LEWINSOHN 



S »[ggg[lii»ISi» 



| THE AFTERriATH s 

OF THE WAR 



BY 

JOHN W. BATDORF 



Copyright, 1918, 
Bv Anti-Socialist Press. 



THE ANTI-SOCIALIST PRESS, Publishers 

117 West 132d Street :: :: :: NEW YORK CITY 



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"HELP THE RED CROSS" 



THE FIRST HORROR 
OF THE WAR_ 

In April, 1914, while making "an extensive tour through South 
America, I was about to return to New York from Rio de Janeiro, 
Brazil. I accidentally ascertained from the American Consul that Prince 
Henry of Prussia was expected to arrive at Rio de Janeiro, aboard the 
Kronprinz Wilhelm. Being anxious to see the Prince, I cancelled my 
reservation on the Lamport & Holt liner, Vandyke (which has since been 
sunk by a German submarine), due to sail the following morning for 
New York. Within a few days, the arrival of the German fleet was 
greeted by the boom of the cannon from the fort at the entrance of the 
beautiful bay of Rio de Janeiro, and salutes fired from the Brazilian 
men-of-war. The battleships, Kronprinz Wilhelm, with Prince Henry of 
Prussia aboard, the Kronprinzessin Cecelia, and a flotilla of gunboats, 
entered the bay. The leading German-American business men and bank- 
ers tendered a reception to the Prince, his attaches, and the officers of 
the German fleet. I attended this reception, was introduced to the 
Prince, whom I interviewed briefly, and it was apparent to me after 
listening to his address, which dealt principally with the deep concern of 
the Kaiser for his subjects who resided in South America, and the 
replies made by the leading German citizens of Rio de Janeiro to Prince 
Henry's address, in which they expressed the loyalty of the. Germans 
to the Fatherland, especially those who had settled in Brazil, Uruguay, 
and the Argentine Republics ; that the purpose of Prince' Henry's 
tour through South America was to carry on the German propaganda, the 
object of which was to impress the German residents, also the officials 
of the Latin-American Republic with the supremacy of the Central 
Powers. 

A few days later a banquet was given by Prince Henry to a number 
of prominent officials of Rio de Janeiro, also the representative Germans 
residing in Brazil. Through the courtesy of the United States Consul, I 
attended this banquet on board the Kronprinz Wilhelm. Little did I 
think as I sat at the festive board and listened to the addresses of the 
principal speakers, and heard the strains of the "Wacht am Rhein" 
played by the band aboard the German battleship, that I, in a short time, 
would become an eye-witness of the stirring events that were to follow 
upon my arrival in England. You can imagine how deeply mortified 
I was to miss the steamer on which I had engaged passage and to 
ascertain that I would be delayed at least a week before the departure 
of another boat. I inquired at the shipping offices if I possibly might 
secure passage to Liverpool aboard one of the tramp steamers which 
was taking on a cargo of beef. I strolled towards the dock and per- 
suaded a boatman to take me aboard a steamer anchored in the bay. 
Upon my arrival on the ship I was informed by the first mate that the 
captain was ashore and could evidently be found at a tavern called the 
Tolly Buccaneers. I went ashore with my friend, the boatman, who by 
the way, conversed with me in Spanish. After considerable difficulty, I 



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located the Jolly Buccaneers tavern and there 'ound Captain Clayton, 
carrying on a lively discussion with the barkeeper, and while the tramp 
steamer of which he was commander was taking on a cargo of beef, the 
good captain was busily engaged in taking on a cargo of rum. I intro- 
duced myself to the captain and asked him if I could sail for Liverpool 
with him. He informed me that his charter did not permit him to 
take passengers, but that if I was willing to sign up as one of his 
crew, he would permit me to go aboard. I told him that I was not a 
very good sailor. He sized me up and informed me that my appear- 
ance indicated that I would make a first-class cabin boy. This amused 
me considerably — that a man of my age should be referred to as a cabin 
boy. I accepted the captain's proposition. He slapped me on the back 
with a wallop that staggered me, and we sealed the compact with a 
drink of Brazilian liquor that almost gagged me. I accompanied the 
captain to the British Consul, and was duly signed up as cabin boy 
of the good ship Chasehill. My compensation was to be one shilling, 
provided upon my arrival at Liverpool, the Captain would certify that I 
had performed my duties as cabin boy faithfully. 

I impatiently awaited the departure of the ship, which was due to 
leave at dusk of the following day, and as I sat on the quarterdeck I 
could see the lights of Rio de Janeiro in the beautiful bay grow dim in 
the distance, and could hear the strains of music wafted over the bay 
from one of the German battleships still anchored off Rio de Janeiro, 
as I toojjt my farewell glimpse of the Brazilian Coast. 

The crew of the tramp steamer consisted of fifty-three men, includ- 
ing the "cabin boy." After we had been at sea for several days, the 
Captain and I had become good friends, caused mainly by my liberal 
distribution of Havana cigars, Scotch whiskey and champagne, which 
I had provided towards the ship's larder at my expense, in consideration 
of my being permitted to become one of the crew. 

After being at sea for almost twenty-two days, we finally sighted 
the Canary Islands, just off the coast of Africa, where Lord Nelson lost 
his arm in the naval engagement between the English fleet and the 
Spanish Armada. We anchored in the Bay of Las Palmas. The Cap- 
tain informed me that he would pay a visit to the British Consul. I 
persuaded him to let me accompany him as I also was desirous of paying 
my respects to the American Consul. Arriving at the British Consulate, 
I was agreeably surprised to find that both the British and American 
Consuls occupied the same office. The Captain and I were invited to 
dinner, which consisted of a Spanish dish called buchara. Then, bidding 
good-bye to the representatives of His Majesty King George V of Eng- 
land, and the representative of my beloved native land, we boarded the 
ship once more, and after a rough passage across the Bay of Biscay, 
we arrived safely at Liverpool, having been thirty-two days at sea. The 
ship-owner's representative awaited us at the dock, believing that the 
Chasehill, with all aboard, was lost at sea, it being overdue at least twelve 
days. 

DECLARATION OF WAR 

Upon my arrival in London, I read the report in the papers that 
the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, while visiting 
a province in Bosnia, were assassinated by a Serbian student, and that 
the Austran Government charged the Serbian Government with inciting 
unrest among Austria's Serbian subjects. Supported. by Germany, Aus- 
tria sent an ultimatum to Serbia in terms made intentionally impossible 
of acceptance, allowing Serbia only two days in which to reply. Humili- 
ating though these demands were, Serbia accepted all but two. These 
she offered to submit to arbitration. Austria did not want to settle 



the quarrel with Serbia. She wanted Serbia! Though every great 
power, except Germany, pleaded with her to arbitrate she declared war 
on July 28. 

Russia, then under the government of the Czar, had always been a 
protector of the interests of her fellow Slav races. She notified Austria 
that she could not see her oppress Serbia without acting in Serbia's 
defence. She began a partial mobilization of her armies to act against 
Austria in Serbia's behalf. On July 26 and 29 Germany warned Russia 
that even a partial mobilization of her armies in support of Serbia and 
against Austria would mean war with Germany. Austria invaded Serbia 
on July 29, and Russia had no choice but to mobilize her armies. Russia 
made a last effort to avert war. On July 31 she offered to stop her 
mobilization if Austria marched no further into Serbia and would 
submit her quarrel with Serbia to arbitration. No reply was ever made 
to this offer. On August 1, Germany, with her armies mobilized, de- 
clared war on Russia and invaded Luxemburg. 

England and France and Italy made every possible effort to induce 
Austria to arbitrate the Serbian dispute. Abetted by Germany, she 
refused. Russia had moved to Serbia's aid. It was what Germany 
desired. The hour had come for Germany to strike — the hour for which 
she had been so long preparing. She mobilized the greatest army ever 
known in history, and for its use in the business of destruction had 
accumulated munitions in untold quantities. On August 3 she declared 
war on France, and sent her armies against the French bordtr. 

France and Russia were bound by a long standing treaty of Alliance 
to help each other if either were attacked. The German plan was to 
deal France a sudden and overwhelming blow, and then to turn her 
strength against Russia. Fortunately for the world's liberty this scheme 
was thwarted. 

The German war plan, long prepared, was to take the shortest and 
easiest road to Paris. This was across Belgium. But the neutrality of 
Belgium, in event of war between France and Germany, had long been 
guaranteed by all the great powers, Germany included, in treaties for- 
mulated in 1831 and 1839. Germany had mobilized her forces on July 
25. She demanded of the Belgian Government the right to send her 
armies across Belgium to attack France. Belgium refused. Great Britain 
had already asked France and Germany if they would agree to respect 
Belgium's neutrality. France agreed to. Germany did not reply. On 
August 4, the German armies had crossed the Belgian border. 

On the evening of August 4, 1914, I strolled along Carlton Terrace 
passing the German Embassy. I was informed by one of the police 
officers on guard in front of the building that it seemed to him as if the 
German Minister, together with his staff, were making preparations to 
leave England. The shades were drawn, and the building was lit up 
brilliantly from the cellar to the garret. I continued my walk towards 
10 Downing Street, near Whitehall. Quite a crowd had collected in 
that vicinity, and within a few moments there arrived Earl Roberts, Lord 
Kitchener, Sir Edward Gray, Henry Asquith, the Honorable Winston 
Churchill, Lord Reading, and Lloyd George, ostensibly to attend an 
important conference and as the gigantic bell, "Old Tom," in the Par- 
liament buildings tolled the midnight hour, word went forth like magic 
that England had decided to withdraw her ambassador from Berlin and 
come to the aid of France and Belgium. The people gathered by thou- 
sands. Men cheered like mad, and women became hysterical. The 
crowds rushed towards Pall Mall, passing Marlborough House, occupied 
by the mother Queen Alexandria, St. James Palace, the beautiful Victoria 
monument, and upon their arrival at Buckingham Palace, the populace 
numbered over 200,000 souls. Never shall I forget that night. The 
King of England, Queen Mary, and the Prince of Wales appeared on the 
balcony of Buckingham Palace and acknowledged the plaudits of their 
subjects. 



On the morrow I witnessed the departure of a part of the regular 
British army; the First and Second Life Guards, the Cold Stream Guards, 
the Irish and Welsh Guards, the London Fusiliers, and last but not 
least, that famous Scotch regiment, the Black Watch. They marched 
proudly along Whitehall, across Trafalgar Square, along the Strand, 
embarking at the Charing Cross railway station on their way to France. 
In front of the American Express offices at the Haymarket were lined 
up for three blocks American tourists, awaiting to secure funds to 
enable them to return to America. Most of them had left their baggage 
in Germany, France and Belgium, so anxious were they to get safely out 
of the war zone and return to their native land. Mr. Hoover, who 
at that time resided in London, hastily formed an American Relief Com- 
mittee with headquarters at the American Embassy on Victoria Street. 
All Americans who desired financial assistance were given every aid 
possible. 

Being anxious to arrive on the scene of the great conflict, with the 
assistance of several influential English officials, I secured a permit that 
enabled me to cross the English Channel. Upon my arrival in Paris, 
I could distinctly hear the boom of the big guns. The Germans were 
seventeen miles from the capital. The general in change of the defenses 
of Paris commandeered taxicabs, motor busses, private automobiles and 
conveyances of every description, and the French soldiers were rushed 
to the outskirts of Paris to repel the German invaders. Most of the 
shops in Paris were closed and the Parisians were all agog with ex- 
citement. I have since ascertained that the sudden retreat of the Germans 
in the vicinity of Paris was caused by the information they had received 
from a German spy that the British and French were about to execute 
a flank movement which might have resulted in the capture at that 
time of several divisions of the German troops engaged in the attack 
on Paris, had it not been forestalled by the withdrawal of the Huns. 

ZEPPELIN ATTACKS 

I recrossed the English Channel, thinking that possibly on my 
arrival at London I might be able to witness the Zeppelin attacks that 
were expected in England. The London papers quieted the fears of the 
English by stating that it didn't seem likely that the Zeppelins would be 
able to reach England. One morning the Britains were given a sur- 
prise. A fleet of Zeppelins attacked the English coast, killing and wound- 
ing quite a number of people, mostly women and children. It was not 
anticipated at that time that the Zeppelin would be able to make the 
distance from the coast to London, as it was eighty miles from the 
coast to England's capital, and the distance to reach there and return 
would be an additional 160 miles, but the unexpected happened. At 
about one o'clock one morning London was attacked in an air raid at 
the village of Leytonville, a suburb of London, twelve miles from 
Trafalgar Square. At the suggestion of Edward Price Bell, the London 
correspondent of the Chicago Daily News, I immediately rushed into a 
taxicab and arrived at Leytonville, and there in a street occupied prin- 
cipally by the working classes, I found several blocks had been com- 
pletely demolished. ^ I visited the ruins of one building occupied by a 
gold-finisher, his wife and six children, and on the top floor in a bed- 
room exposed to the sky, I found a bed, the mattress of which was 
still reeking with the blood of an infant girl, three months old, and a 
boy four years of age, who had been slaughtered in their sleep by a 
bomb. Across the street I was present when the remains of an old 
man, 87 years of age, and his wife, 82 years old, were being taken 
from the ruins of their home. Strange to say, the almshouse in that 
vicinity, in which a large number of Germans had been interned, had 
suffered no injury other than shattered glass. I counted over 160 shrapnel 



bullet holes in the walls of the building, none of the inmates being 
injured. A billiard hall near the London and Southwestern station had 
been struck by a Zeppelin bomb, killing eight persons instantly. Several 
nights later another raid took place. A bomb struck a churchyard at 
Shorditch, on the east side of London, causing an excavation large enough 
to store a street car. Across the street another bomb demolished a 
building occupied as a meat market. No casualties of any other descrip- 
tion happened in this raid. 

You can imagine my disappointment in not being able to witness 
the Zeppelin itself in action. I strolled the streets of London night after 
night in the hope that I might be able to see one. An amusing incident 
occurred one evening. Along about midnight, while walking along New 
Oxford Street, I noticed a number of police officers (they call them 
"Bobbies" in England) gazing into the sky. I asked one of them if 
he saw a Zeppelin about. He replied gruffly no, that they were simply 
watching a building across the street which they thought was being 
visited by burglars. I said to the officer: "Why don't you go up and 
get them?" He replied that an Englishman's house was his castle and 
that they could not go in without a king's warrant. I said: "Why 
don't you go over to Buckingham Palace, wake the King and get a 
warrant?" The officer replied: "You silly ass, we don't have to get 
the warrant from the King himself. We must go to the Bow Street 
police station and secure the warrant from the magistrate." Then I 
said: "What will you do in the meantime?" and he replied: "We'll 
stand on guard here and wait for the burglars to come out." This 
amused me considerably, and I thought that if we had here a little 
Irish policeman that I knew of in good old New York he'd take his 
club and climb the side of that building like a monkey, and go in and 
get the burglars, warrant or no warrant. 

Several evenings later, I was the guest of Major Hughes of the 
Royal Field Artillery, for dinner at the Army and Navy Club, after 
which the Major and I attended a theatrical performance at the Lyceum 
Theatre. Whether the lack of sleep or the uninteresting performance 
caused me to doze away I am not certain but at any rate I awoke with a 
start. The doughty Major was jabbing me in the ribs with his elbow. 
He said: "Say, Yank," (you can imagine how indignant a southern 
colonel would be to be addressed as "Yank," but they call all Americans 
Yanks abroad, especially in England), "don't you think we had better go 
out and have a little something?" to which I replied: "I never drink, 
except simetimes." 

THE BOMB HORROR 

Just as we left the building I heard a tremendous crash. It sounded 
like the roar of big guns and a thunder clap combined. The people on 
the street were all gazing upwards, and there overhead, hovering over 
the great city of London like a huge bird of prey, was the much- 
dreaded Zeppelin. You could see it as plain as day. It was visible to 
the naked eye for about eleven minutes. A score of searchlights were 
shining on the monster from the roofs of all the principal large buildings 
in London; the British Museum, Albert Hall, Marble Arch, and other 
places. I heard a terrific explosion. A bomb had struck the roof of the 
theatre we had just left, killing and injuring over seventy-nine persons 
in the balcony. I could distinctly hear the clatter of the anti-aircraft 
guns which' were attacking the Zeppelin. I waved my cane in the air 
and shouted: "Give them hell!" An American who stood at my side 
became excited, pulled out his revolver and fired at the Zeppelin. He 
was immediately pounced upon by a police officer and placed under 
arrest, it being a very serious offense to carry fire-arms in England. 



Across the street from where I stood a bomb struck a motor bus, 
instantly killing twenty-two passengers. They were blown into frag- 
ments, and for several days thereafter thej^ were picking up shreds of 
human flesh within a radius of half a mile in that vicinity. The streets 
were dark, the lights being extinguished during the raid. I stumbled 
over something. A policeman assisted me to my feet and asked me if I 
was injured. I informed him that I had fallen over something. He 
put his lantern on the ground, and there was a human head. The 
officer asked me to remain where I was until the ambulance arrived. I 
covered the ghastly object with a newspaper. On both sides of the 
Strand from the foot of Waterloo Road to Trafalgar Square, you could 
put your hand in any shop window and help yourself. The window 
glasses had all been smashed. It's an ill wind that don't blow someone 
good, as on the morrow while strolling about in the vicinity of Piccadilly 
Circus and Leicester Square, a number of nuts (we call them dudes in 
our country) were walking about wearing new Derby hats, collars, and 
neckties of all colors of the rainbow. Evidently they had helped them- 
selves. 

During this raid the people were not excited nor women hysterical. 
It seemed very much as if the Germans were giving a Fourth of July 
celebration for the edification of the British public instead of throwing 
deadly missiles and killing and maiming innocent women and children. 

I witnessed another air raid several nights thereafter. I complained 
to the hotel clerk that I wished an outside room with plenty of air. He 
reluctantly gave me the room I desired. I then strolled towards a certain 
club, a rendezvous for literary men, actors and authors. A number of 
American newspaper men had persuaded some of their English cousins to 
participate in the gay and festive game of poker. While I was trying to 
persuade an Englishman, who informed me that he had visited America, 
that our country was the greatest on earth, I heard a tremendous crash. 
A bomb had fallen in front of the club building, shattering the glass. 
The poker players didn't wait to cash in their chips, so quickly was the 
game finished. You could have played checkers on their coat-tails, they 
left the building so rapidly. 

Upon my return to the hotel I met with a bitter disappointment The 
outside room together with my luggage had disappeared during the Zeppe- 
lin raid, the entire side of the building being demolished. I was forced 
to seek other quarters for the night. Upon my arrival at the Charing 
Cross Hotel I registered, but it is needless to state that I did not insist 
upon having an outside room this time. A room in the basement would 
have been perfectly satisfactory. The clerk asked me if I had luggage. 
I said I did. He agreed to send for it. I said : "All right, I've been look- 
ing for it myself, but if you can find it the drinks are on me." The 
baggage was never recovered and I was forced to visit a haberdasher's and 
a tailoring establishment to replenish my depleted wardrobe. 

Previous to this Zeppelin raid, the Germans residing in London were 
shown every courtesy, but after the many casualties resulting from the 
air raids, the people were considerably exercised, especially over the 
killing and maiming of so many innocent women and children, and one 
night a number of German baker shops were demolished by the excited 
populace. In spite of the efforts of the police to protect the property of 
the Germans, considerable damage was inflicted. 

One of the most pathetic incidents I recall is a visit to Richmond, 
which is situated on the Thames River, a short distance from London. 
There at the Old Star & Garter Hote\, which had been converted into a 
hospital, were possibly over 2,000 soldiers who had been in the Battle of 
the Armentierre. They were being visited by their wives and children, 
fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters. It was a beautiful day They 
could hear the birds sing, but could not see the beautiful sunshine nor 
could they look into the faces of their loved ones again They were 
totally blind, the result of asphyxiating gases used by the German bar 
barians. 



ENGLISH FORTITUDE 

During some of the Zeppelin raids a number of arrests were made. 
The manager of a hotel near Holborn Viaduct, and several German 
waiters were arrested, being caught signalling the Zeppelins with lights 
from the roof of the hotel building. Swift punishment was meted out 
t« them. They were shot in the Tower of London. The lights in all 
shop windows were not permitted to be lit. The blinds were closed in pri- 
vate dwelling houses as well as in stores. The street lights are mostly 
all extinguished, making it very dangerous for pedestrians to stroll about 
London at night, especially during a fog. In spite of a printed warning 
signed by Sir Henry, chief of police, that all persons should remain in- 
doors, or in the subway stations, during Zeppelin raids, the people insisted 
on rushing out into the streets so as to be able to get a view of the Zeppe- 
lins in action. 

The English people are very patriotic and deserve great credit for 
their loyalty to their Government. Without conscription, an army of over 
four million men was raised, something unprecedented in the history of 
warfare. One of the most stirring events that I was an eyewitness of 
in London was the reception accorded Sergeant Mike O'Leary, who won 
the Victoria Cross in the Battle of Hill 60 in France. He was greeted 
like a conquering hero. Mike, although a diminutive Irishman of slight 
build and considerably under weight, himself killed a dozen Germans and 
captured 5 of them single-handed. After his superior officers had been 
killed and the other men rendered hors de combat, Mike O'Leary worked 
his gun single-handed alone until it became too hot for further use, and 
he then began to fusillade the Germans with hand grenades until the 
Huns thought they were being attacked by a regiment instead of one 
man. 

I never knew it was possible for a dude wearing a monocle to fight. 
I learnt differently. One day while strolling along Haymarket Square, I 
met a young chap, a lieutenant in the Cold Stream Guards, about 23 
years of age. He was wearing a monocle in his left eye, smoking a 
cigarette, twirling a swagger stick with his right hand, and leading a 
bulldog with the left. He appeared anything but a fighter. I afterwards 
ascertained that this so-called dude had been decorated with the Victoria 
Cross because of his bravery in rescuing one of his men who had been 
mortally wounded under fire. 

The self-anointed, would-be ruler of the universe — "KAISER BILL 
WHO NEVER WORKED AND NEVER WILL"— persuaded himself 
and the German people that we Americans would put the "dollar before 
the man" and were pacifists first, last and all the time, and that he could 
with impunity attack unfortified cities, killing and maiming defenseless 
old men and innocent women and children in defiance of international 
law and rules governing humanity. And to cap the climax he murdered 
American men, women and children on the high seas without compunction 
or remorse. 

The silent man at Washington, who presides over the destinies of this 
great nation, has the backing of the American people, who, to the last 
citizen, are ready and willing to sacrifice their lives and exhaust their last 
dollar to crush this abominable Prussianism which the Kaiser and his 
rr«w of Junkers has installed, so that peace, contentment and happiness 
thill reign throughout the universe. 



THE WAR'S AFTERMATH 

Beyond the war itself and what is to come after the war, no sub- 
ject has so much interest to the people at large as that of Government 
ownership, and, co-ordinately with it, the question of how to raise 
$8,000,000,000 by taxation. The war makes both of these questions not 
only relative but inspires cogent reasonings in discussions, and when 
one of these questions is brought up the other enters, too, for settlement. 

The profiteering by the corporations gives pregnancy to the thought 
that by raising prices on commodities, and then by taxing profits, a 
great sum of money can be gained for revenue to support the Govern- 
ment to win this war. But, assuredly, this operation is placing a tre- 
mendous tax on consumption, and in an open manner, too, which, in the 
very nature of things, will bring about a reaction on patriotism; on 
the administration which today holds the confidence of the people ; and 
upon the membership of the present Congress now so united upon legis- 
lative matters to win this war. And to win this war we must give our all, 
no matter what legislative burden is placed upon the backs of the people. 

The people are bearing the strain of war under the present law 
most nobly, and this is one of the precious accruments coming to the 
people because of this unhappy debacle of war. But the question we 
wish to put, Will the doubling of the tax gained by the Bill of October 
3rd, 1917, all of it in the last analysis calling for additional taxes placed 
on consumption, break the backbone of the present confidence exist- 
ing among the people? We should say yes to this question, because 
the element of hope for a lower cost of living has been left out in the 
proposition presented. But by installing Government ownership by the 
plan outlined in the Geometric Tax proposition, the nation will not 
only raise the money by cheerful giving, but install hope and reinforce 
patriotism, too, in the hearts and in the souls of the American people. 
No thought except that of hope will fuse the varied peoples of all nations 
assembled here and make of us one people in fact as well as in name. 

Our contention is that, when, in the past, rights for inventions and 
copyrights were given to individuals, it was not understood by the 
people at large, at that time, that these inventions and copyrights were 
to be turned over to corporations and be capitalized by taking for the 
purpose the buyer's good-will to buy the products of inventions and copy- 
rights. Nor, did the people have the slightest knowledge that traveling 
and legal expenses, advertising costs, salaries of agents engaged in 
promotion and the carrying on of corporate business was to be made 
up and capitalized under the meaning of good-will transferred from its 
owner, the buyer, to the monopolist using the corporate law to satisfy 
his desire to "get-rich-quick." Of course, this good-will of those who 
buy has served the promoter's plan to pay up in full the stock shares 
issued by corporations and has become a power installed to force con- 
sumers to pay increasing prices on food, clothing, shelter and luxuries, 
in order that the corporate monopoly might declare dividends on intan- 
gible assets. 

And realizing that no State taxes good-will, nor is it considered in 
the make-up of valuation in any State of the Union, in the ultimate 
we must face Government ownership and a new system of taxation. 
And Government ownership can only be founded and built up on three 
well-recognized bases of the natural law. Concentration by a bureau- 
cratic ruling power, such as obtains in Germany ; Confiscation^ the 
anarchy of Socialism-Bolshevikism ; Decentralization, Jeffersonianism, 
the word which the American mind accepts as representing the natural 
law of distribution, i.e., that all the heirs should enjoy the distribution 
of the family fortune instead of but one; distribution of lands and 



incomes, the product of the laborers, with governmental opportunities 
tc all of the people to enjoy distribution rather than that special privi- 
leges and monopoly should be given to the few. In fact, the distrib- 
uting economics we know of and accept in the one worcl — Americanism. 
The three forms of Government ownership more distinctly stated arc 
as follows . 

(i) The German system, as developed in the Reichstag from 1874 
tc 1884, was largely based upon the thought of Rodbertus, i.e., an imperial 
power to control industrial concentration, with an evolutionary period 
ot centuries to bring about a more equal distribution of productions 
to the working classes. This proposition was intended to allay and to 
escape the thought of Marxian socialism coming to Germany, and 
although 4,500,000 of German voters supported socialism, it was State so- 
cialism and a far different proposition from that founded by Karl Marx. 

In Germany the rule has been that the child at four years of age is 
given over for six days of the week to the school-master and to the 
minister on the seventh. Each student is educated on lines for special 
vocational work, and when school and university days are over, the 
State gives place for employment wherein the citizen becomes the s~-f 
to an autocracy installed until death relieves him from his cares. The 
German system of Government ownership gives no room for individual 
initiative to thrive and do well to satisfy human ambition. In our 
nation we recognize what this principle means and we should never 
forget it, yet, with its undoubted success, our Postal system is founded 
and operated on the same lines as the German system. 

(2) The socialist proposition for Government ownership is founded 
on the natural law of confiscation, brought about by an era of intense 
concentration. It offers no pretense to compensate former owners for 
property taken over by the State, nor to establish a central power to 
govern. It is based upon a fallacious doctrine that publicly used prop- 
erty belongs only to the public, and that anyone desiring work may 
take any opening presented, without any further provision than that 
public property is for use and not for profit. Bolshevikism and the 
Russian nation are telling the tale by the anarchy installed. 

(3) The Jeffersonian plan, based upon decentralization, may be used 
to represent the American thought for Government ownership, because 
it is in harmony with the Federal Constitution as a governing power. 
The other two plans, one based upon autocracy under a government 
ruled by bureaucracy, and the* other based upon confiscation with no 
governing power at all, are both abhorrent to the ethics and to the ideals 
inherent to our people and to the check and balance system upon which 
out Government is founded. 

The New York American, in an editorial dated July 6th, 1918, says, 
"After we have taken over the railroads, the ships, the telegraphs and 
telephones, we should at once proceed to take into public possession the 
coal mines, the oil deposits, the forests and the water powers. . . . We 
must have Government ownership of these vital factors of business and 
must operate them solely for the interest of the whole people. . -. . One 
of two things we surely will have. We will either have State socialism, 
controlling all the affairs of the nation and of the individual, or we 
will have public ownership of those things which are of right and in 
their nature public, Combined with private ownership of those things 
which are of right and in their nature private. We will have either a 
judicious and healthful radicalism, or we will have a revolutionary 
socialism in our political and economic affairs." 

The New York American untortunately is assertive; seldom specific 
m its phrases This paper rarely tells how its proposals and purposes 
arc to be accomplished. Our people want neither the German system 
of Govtrnment ownership not the Marxian system of .Socialism. Neither 
<M these two systems conform to the ethics and ideals of the American 
theory of Government.. One would end in the worst form ot bureaucracy; 



the other would end in anarchy and destruction. Thomas Jefferson's 
principles for decentralization conform to the Constitution by the Gov- 
ernment owning the value of actual capital assets of the corporations for 
bonds issued, i.e., "To borrow money, on the credit of the United States : 
To regulate commerce among the States." * 

> Mr. Hearst and his papers should declare what form of Govern- 
ment ownership he and his papers want, (i) German State socialism 
based upon concentration of power. (2) Marxian socialism based upon 
confiscation with no compensation to owners for property taken over by 
Government. (3) The American form of Government ownership based 
upon decentralization with full payment for inventoried capital asset., 
of corporations, tabulated as for new replacement of such property. 
If we must go to Government ownership, our faith is predominant that 
the American people will choose the American plan rather than submit 
to Autocracy in government or the anarchy desired by the socialist. 

Under Article 1, section 8, Congress, with the approval of the Presi- 
dent, has power in time of war to install the American thought for 
Government ownership, so that the present administration, and the suc- 
ceeding administrations, too, may gain additional prestige and political 
power. President Lincoln in time of war proclaimed emancipation to an 
enslaved race, but in 1865 this nation found it necessary to add the 13th 
Amendment to the Constitution to make President Lincoln's words 
good. Because of war, we have the same opportunity now to create 
Government ownership to free actual capital from confiscation ; to free 
industrial workers from a serfdom more galling than slavery itself ; 
and, best of all, to free the consumers from the bondage they are now 
under to pay the price for commodities the corporations please to charge. 
After the war the people have power to add the Geometric Tax amend- 
ments to the Constitution to make the war act for Government owner- 
ship good and inflexible to rule the American nation on lines of right 
rather than by the might possessed by concentration of power. 

The warning is plain. Concentration of power is now secretly 
maneuvering to obtain the mastery over the people in the coming Govern- 
ment ownership enactments. It was so in 1808 when the U. S. Supreme 
Court judicially declared in the Madison-Marbury case that it had power 
to rule whether a statute law was constitutional or unconstitutional. 
The Constitution gave the Supreme Court no such power, but, to pre- 
serve its dignity as one of the three erected powers under the Constitu- 
tion, the Court is compelled to exercise its powers when the people have 
failed in their plain duty to add amendments to the Constitution, covering 
the particular point in law needed by the Court. 

Also, in cases 164 U. S. 686, 113 V. S. 396 and 119 U. S. no, the 
Court decided that corporations were citizens and persons and that the 
corporations had the same rights in law as the natural person. In other 
words, that the one stick representing the natural citizen, and the concrete 
bundle of sticks, representing a collective number of persons, each had 
the same rights in commercial enterprises. The fault of this decision, 
never corrected by the people, was that the concentration of the bundle 
had power to destroy the natural person in business ; and today the 
citizen cannot do business at all in competition with the corporations. 

The people, on this question of Government ownership, must decide 
for themselves if they are to retain the benefits coming to the nation 
by the reconstruction of the times. The Hearst newspapers, with other 
interests contemplating professional and better financial returns for 
capital and labor, are advocating Government ownership based upon 
concentration of power — the German system. In opposition to this plan 
of governmental care under State socialism, the American Constitutional 
Alliance is advocating decentralization — i.e., Jeffersonianism — as the peo- 
ple's plan for Government ownership. 



♦The Constitution, Article 1, Section 8. 



DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 

IN DEATH GRAPPLE AFTER WAR, 
SAYS CONGRESSMAN RAINEY 

John Temple Graves, Washington correspondent, writing 
for the New York American, as published under date of 
January 13, 1918, presents the mind of Henry T. Rainey, 
Congressman from the State of Illinois, in a most remark- 
able exposition of events which will most likely occur as a 
natural reaction caused by the present debacle of war. 

"It is a thought-compelling utterance which will chal- 
lenge the serious consideration of thinking men through- 
out the country. His views are worthy of far more than 
ordinary consideration by reason of his profound studies in 
economics and history. 

"For sixteen years a member of Congress, a stalwart 
Democrat, reckoned among the leaders of his party from 
his first term, the effective chairman of a powerful com- 
mittee, Rainey commands the respect of his contemporaries 
and the confidence of his State to a notable degree. 

"He seldom speaks, but when he does he speaks as the 
result of study and reflection. His conversation was on the 
question of the tremendous problems which will force them- 
selves upon us at the conclusion of the war, which Mr. 
Rainey thinks are of even greater moment than the war 
itself." 

"The world has entered a shadow from which it will not 
soon emerge. I am not so much concerned about the war 
problems confronting us as I am about the more serious 
problems which will confront us when the war ends. We 
have pledged all our resources for the success of the under- 
taking in which we are now engaged, and the nation is 
already beginning to think on war questions as a unit. 

"Bills involving the expenditure of fabulous sums are 
enacted into law without opposition. Our national expen- 
ditures are without precedent in the history of nations. 
We feel the war must terminate with victory for ourselves 
and our allies, but not until our great army reaches Europe. 

"We cannot expect to become a decisive factor this year. 
The chances are the war will continue with a tremendous 
drain even on our unparalleled resources for three or four 
years to come. No one has been courageous enough to 
guess at the expense, to us of maintaining an. army of two 
million men in France, and we must have that many men 
there to accomplish anything, A peace without victory 
means the continuing, but on a scale tremendously larger, 
of war preparations for another greater war, which will 
occur within the next quarter of a century. As a nation 
we are doing what we must do — no other course is open. 



"It is riot too soon to consider tremendous problems 
which will be presented after the war ends, and it is part 
of wise statesmanship to consider the possibilities of the 
future. The interesting thing in the world, both from an 
economic and political standpoint, is the Russian situation. 
Nothing so amazing has happened in the world for two: 
thousand years. Is the world being made over before our 
eyes? Are the old systems of holding property, of govern- 
ing even republics, to end with the war? 

"A new issue demanding consideration is being injected 
into the fabric of every civilized government, and its in- 
fluence is being felt here. Present party differences are 
academic when compared to the great issue now tendered. 
Are we, as a nation, being irresistibly drawn into the mael- 
strom of Socialism? Are our methods of government 
established with sufficient strength to resist it? After all, 
is Socialism and what it appears to stand for, the govern- 
ing method which should be adopted here and throughout 
the world? Socialism, unless it is international, must fail 
to reach the ideals. These are serious questions and de- 
serve serious consideration. 

"How far will we progress in the next two or three years 
along the lines of Russian Socialism? Under laws now 
on the statute books, we have confronting us, an annual 
expenditure for war pensions of five hundred million dol- 
lars — perhaps more than this. The submission of the pro- 
hibition amendment to the States may mean the loss of 
three hundred and fifty million dollars in revenue before 
the war ends. The submission of this amendment was 
proper and inevitable. Every Government employee is 
demanding his compensation be increased. They are rap- 
idly organizing and becoming affiliated with the American 
Federation of Labor. There can be but one reason for 
this, to increase their salary. 

"The American Federation of Labor is pledged to assist 
them in bettering their conditions, and this, of course, 
means a demand on Congress for larger compensation. 
The demands they are making now mean, if granted, an 
increase in our annual budget of one hundred million dol- 
lars per year. We have taken over the railroads. This 
makes a million additional Government employees. They 
are all organized and all demanding wage increases up to 
40 per cent of their present compensation. Part of their 
demands, we are told, will soon be granted. We now have 
on the Government payrolls (counting railroad employees 
as Government employees) nearly one-fifth of the adult 
voting population of the United States, all demanding wage 
increases. 

"The taking over is hailed with delight, not only by 
railroad employees, but by stockholders of railroads and 



bondholders, who expect their securities under Government 
control to be more stable than they have been in the past. 
The holders of railroad stocks and bonds are evidently as 
anxious to receive compensation from the Treasury of the 
United States — possibly increased compensation — as are 
the railroad employees. If the railroad employees and 
railroad owners are both anxious for the Government to 
take over the railroads, it is hardly possible that Govern- 
ment control will end with the war. Government owner- 
ship of railroads seems now to be inevitable. Government 
ownership of telegraph and telephone systems must follow 
as a matter of course. 

"There is a strong sentiment in favor of taking over 
the coal mines, and not even the mine owners are seri- 
ously opposing this proposition. If the war lasts two or 
three years, the taking over of these mines seems inevitable 
as a war measure. The taking over of developed water 
power possibilities is already, or soon will be, in process of 
accomplishment. I think I ha-Ze enumerated enough pos- 
sibilities of the immediate future to indicate the danger 
(if it is a danger) to which I desire to call attention. 

"There is a strong demand to compel the larger incomes 
and well-to-do to pay the increasing expenses of govern- 
ment. We are already taking in excess profits and incomes 
about thirty per cent, after allowing an exemption ranging 
from 7 to 9 per cent. In England they take 80 per cent 
over an exemption to about 8 per cent. Large increases 
in our taxes on incomes and excess profits are a possibility 
of the very near future. It is necessary — absolutely in- 
evitable. AH the above is Socialism. Millionaire stock- 
holders and employees who work for a monthly or daily 
wage are all exhibiting Socialistic tendencies without 
realizing it. Modern Socialism, as now being developed in 
Russia, means that every man's income must be increased 
by the State. 

"If the present alignment of political parties is to con- 
tinue in the future as in the past, and if we have on our 
federal pay rolls nearly one-fourth of the adult voting pop- 
ulation of the United States, all demanding wage increases 
and salary increases, we then have on our pay rolls enough 
federal employees to determine the election in favor of 
that political party which will unequivocally promise to 
agree to their salary demands. If we take over the utilities 
I have mentioned with as much enthusiastic support on 
the part of stockholders as the owners of our railroads now 
exhibit with reference to the taking ovetf of railways, we 
will have no considerable influential portion of our popu- 
lation opposing the advance of Socialism. 

"I might call attention also to the fact that with the 
enthusiastic support of stockholders and employees in our 



shipping corporation we have, practically now taken over 
our merchant ships and are providing for the construction 
of a tremendously large government-owned merchant 
marine. When we have taken over the utilties I have men- 
tioned in connection with the utilities we already control, 
that party which is pledged to' a continuation of Govern- 
ment ownership will receive the support of all employees 
who are demanding still further wage increases and of all 
stockholders who are willing to agree to those demands, 
provided their stock dividends are secured by the Govern- 
ment, and that party which promises these things in order 
to win will win. And when that victory comes Socialism) 
has assumed control and will be ready to start upon the 
work of carrying out the. theories for which it really stands 
and for which it avowedly stands in Russia to-day, to-wit: 
"i. — Essential changes in land titles. 
"2. — Modification of our taxing systems, with perhaps a 
tax on land values. 

"3. — Abolition of private property rights. 
"4. — Distribution of the profits of industrials among 
working men. 

"How to raise five or six billion dollars a year by Federal 
taxes after the war is over is one of the most serious prob- 
lems presented now. Tariff differences between the two 
parties are not now worthy of serious consideration. 
Tariffs of the future ought to be arranged to compel each 
schedule to yield the maximum tariff. In other words, a 
tariff for revenue only will in the future mean the maximum 
tariff rate. This will be neither free trade nor protection, 
but a tariff arranged on this basis cannot be expected to 
yield over $400,000,000 a year. As a matter of fact, it is 
doubtful whether it could be made to yield $400,000,000 a 
year, but with a six billion budget confronting us either 
amount is, from a revenue standpoint, almost negligible. 
We expect to collect from manufactured tobacco for each 
year under the increased rates the sum of $164,000,000. 
This amount can be increased without injuring the business 
$25,000,000 in all probability. . 

"How can we collect the tremendous balance which re- 
mains? I am assuming the revenues from distilled and 
fermented liquors will grow less as the years pass, and I 
am not discussing the moral questions involved. Even if 
this source of revenue remains unimpaired at $350,000,000, 
we are still left with the possibility of being compelled to 
collect annually after the war ends until we have paid off 
enough bonds to eliminate our interest charge, which will 
probably not occur within the next twenty-five years, ap- 
proximately $6,500,000,000, practically all of which must be 
collected by direct taxes of various kinds, especially by 
taxes on incomes and profits." 



IS AMERICANISM 
UNDERSTOOD? 

A Patriotic Answer Must Be Found 

The ideals of Americanism emanate solely and alone from the Fed- 
eral Constitution. Up to October 12th, 1776, America was governed by 
the ideals of Aristocracy — that of landlord and tenant. On that im- 
mortal day, never to be forgotten, Thomas Jefferson, member of the 
Virginia House of Burgesses, introduced a "bill to enable tenants in tail 
to convey entailed property in fee simple. Two days later he reported 
a bill doing away with the whole system of entail . . . and the cognate 
principle of primogeniture followed assailed by the same vigorous hand." 
This date, October 12th, 1776, stands as a monument and as a milestone in 
American history, dividing the ruling power of Aristocracy from that of 
the Democracy of Americanism ; first under the democracy of the Con- 
tinental Congress, apd second under that of the Federal Constitution, 
written in 1787 and adopted in 1789. 

When economic questions are discussed the evils of destitution, pov- 
erty, and our unjust system of taxation and distribution is fully pre- 
sented, the common thought to the mind occurs, "What's the Remedy? 
The answer returned is either the word "Socialism" or silence. It is 
rare indeed to hear the word "Americanism" uttered to cure the dis- 
tress now prevailing among the toilers of the nation. Yet, Americanism 
holds the remedy, if we should care to study what Americanism can do 
to overcome the ills afflicting the people in every part of American society. 
All we have to do is to explain and give a truthful meaning of the 
different American ruling powers, and the results which flow from their 
bureaucratic proceedings. 

• The American people are ruled by five bureaucratic powers. Three 
of these are absolute : Two are relative. The Federal Constitution not 
only created but defined the limitations under which it controlled the 
three absolute powers — the Congress, the United States Supreme Court 
and the executive power, the President of the United States. As the 
Constitution is inflexible, unchangeable in ruling power, except as the 
people change it by amendment, these three ruling powers have also 
fixed powers under which they rule bureaucratically within the lines 
of a democracy established. The members of the House of Representa- 
tives and one-third of the National Senate are elected every two years. 
Every four years, with a candidate for the Presidency, the House for 
the second time, two-thirds of the Senate membership are elected abso- 
lutely by the democracy of the people. The members of the United 
States Supreme Court are appointed by the President, and the Con- 
gress holds the power of impeachment over this court; and from these 
two facts, taken in connection with the power of the people, under and 
by the provisions of the IXth and Xth Amendments, to add a new 
amendment to the Constitution aimed to overcome an unpopular decision 
made by this court, the democracy of Americanism rules the United 
States Supreme Court whenever it so wills. If Congress enacts laws 
that, in the opinion of the Supreme Court, are not made in pursuance 
to the Constitution, then, by the court's decision, these laws have no 
power and are as if never passed by the legislative branch of our 1 
Government. Therefore, from this fact, the Constitution stands for 
the democracy of the people. If members of Congress prove themselves 
subservient to venality, inefficient, immoral, or show a lack of states- 
manship in legislative enactments, the guilty ones are dropped at the 
next election, which proves that Americanism means something in a 



democracy besides holding fast to the^ pure essence of recall procedure. 

In the Eight-Hour law case, decision given March 20th, 1917, Chief 

Justice White said : "All the propositions relied upon and arguments 

ADVANCED ULTIMATELY COME TO TWO QUESTIONS: FIRST, THE ENTIRE WANT 
OF CONSTITUTIONAL POWER TO DEAL WITH THE SUBJECTS EMBRACED BY THE 
STATUTE, AND, SECOND, SUCH ABUSE OF THE POWER IF POSSESSED AS REN- 
DERED its exercise unconstitutioal." These words mean that if the 
people do not use their sovereign rights to bring, by amendments, the 
Constitution up to modern thought from time to time, the Court would 
be compelled to use its mind of reason in deciding cases which come 
under practices never dreamed of when the Constitution was instituted. 
In other words, the Supreme Court wants to be governed by the words 
of the Constitution if possible, but, as the Court has no power to either 
change the Constitution or add amendments to it, it says to the people 
plainly that they must either add such amendments as will create funda- 
mental laws to govern modern conditions in industrialism and con- 
cerning congested wealth, or, in defense of our obligations, we, as 
bureaucrats, will establish our own fundamental laws, by using our 
mind of reason to decide what we believe is right and just in all 
modern cases brought before us. Therefore, the democracy of the 
people falls and becomes withered, when the people fail to do their 
duty, as the framers of the Constitution intended that they should, 
whenever occasion found it necessary to maintain the continuity of 
action and purpose to assure a lasting instrument to govern and repre- 
sent the word-power of citizen sovereignty to rule a citizen democracy. 

History proves that the democracy of the people is not alive and 
active when State statutory laws are enacted by the legislatures of 
the several States. The people of Oregon, and other States, too, thought 
that control of insidious powers would be gained when their legislatures 
authorized the laws of Initiative and Referendum, but, unhappily, this 
manner of constructing the laws has not been an unqualified success. 
The reasons for this are easily seen when we realize the present indif- 
ference shown by the people to govern themselves. The socialist thought 
that the State should look after and care for the people has been the 
canker sore to this principle of initiative and referendum rule, as it 
was absolutely un-American from start to finish. At first it seemed to 
the uninitiated mind that the people had woke up, but, when the novelty 
had passed, individual interest lapsed and to-day the people look upon 
this plan of better civic virtue as a dead letter in the law. A little 
thought and reflection will give the explanation, and then it will be 
realized that the principle was not laid upon the ground of funda- 
mental law, so that it could withstand the storm of venal and vicious 
legislation of interested yet of insidious minds. Instead of laying the 
foundation within the fountain-head of American law — the Constitution, 
the first and supreme law of the land, the people of the Western States 
built their plan at the top and it became simply a burden instead of an 
autocratic power at the base of government, and thus form a law and a 
force that must be obeyed because of the absolute powers of govern- 
ment — the democracy of the people. 

In addition to the three bureaucratic powers, which the people have 
consented to obey, when called upon to carry out the action to provide 
safety to a free democracy, the American people are under the dominion 
of two relative powers more autocratic and more bureaucratic than the 
three natural powers. The first is corporate industrialism with its power 
to hire when and whom it pleases; to pay what salaries and wages it 
pleases; to discharge whenever and whom it pleases; to hold the con- 
sumers in bondage to pay the price for product it pleases to charge. 
The "obligation of contracts" and the "right of private ownership of 
property," the rights originally given to individualism alone, was assured 
to the corporations when the United States Supreme Court made it so 
by its decision in the Standard Oil and other cases; and from the 



fact that the people have put no words to the Constitution to define 
the democratic power of control over corporate business dealings, and 
coupled with all this negligence by the people, the United States Supreme 
Court comes in and says that, insomuch as the court has no guiding 
words concerning corporations and congested wealth in the Constitution, 
it must give decisions under the "Rule of Reason" thought and make 
the enacted law — the Sherman Anti-Trust law — of no consequence in 
deciding whether large combinations were operating in "restraint of 
trade." So far as the rulings of the Supreme Court are concerned, 
judged by the decisions in the cases quoted, we are ruled to-day by that 
court sitting as bureaucrats in judgment instead of by the fundamental 
law — the Constitution. The fault of this must be laid at the door of the 
people, and no governing power may be criticised, or even censured, 
until the sovereign citizens do their duty to bring their Constitution 
up to date. 

Because of the world's war, the corporations have made enormous 
profits and have paid dividends upon watered stock from 50 to 1,000 
and more per cent. Some people may say that the people of Europe 
have paid these big profits and that the American people have gained. 
But a little reflection will show, that while the nations of Europe have 
paid these higher prices, that price has also been paid upon all com- 
modities by the American people to live. In these days of communi- 
cation and transportation, the corporations see to it that they sell their 
product to the highest bidder, no matter from what part of the world 
that bid may come ; and this forces the American people to pay the 
same proportionate prices as do the people of other nations. The value 
of commodity to-day is not based upon its cost but upon the necessity 
of the people to live. 

Concentration in all business affairs is now the universal rule, not 
because stockholders are less humane than individual merchants were 
in the old days of competition, but because the statute laws, enacted 
in the past forty years, have created an irresponsible ownership in 
business affairs under the corporate laws of the States. If infractions 
of the laws or accidents happen, unless in a vulgar sense of human 
depravity by owners and promoters, the officers and employees of the 
corporations are arrested, convicted of crime and must serve unjustly a 
sentence in prison, when, in fact, individual ownership should be the 
more responsible. Therefore, when monopolies are created, when unjust 
profits are taken because of the people's necessities, the force back of 
the officers and employees should be the responsible agency; and, be- 
cause of this, what is wanted most is a constitutional power to auto- 
cratically hold the stock-owning power of our corporations in check, 
so that their bureaucracy of power over the officers and employees of 
corporations may not be an influence of harm to the people at large. 

Many noble, humanitarian and altruistic thoughts are expressed by 
the best minds of every age ; but, as expressed, develops no power to 
install them in governmental action. Therefore, the conception of these 
thoughts by brilliant, God-fearing minds is wasted upon the desert air 
and comes to nothing. More practical men recognize that autocracy 
in government is the mighty engine to rule for good or bad. In this 
enlightened age only two forms of such government are permissible. 
One where the State takes care of the people from the top: The 
other where self-government takes care of not only the State but the 
people, too, from the bottom. One represents the government of Ger- 
many: The other represents the American autocracy. These two are 
antithetical to each other, enemies in fact and therefore at war. The 
autocracy of the Kaiser, with his satellite nobility surrounding and 
protecting him, governs the German people and must be obeyed. The 
autocracy of the sovereign American people, as expressed in words 
ratified by them to the Constitution, must be obeyed by all people shel- 
tered by the flag representing the Constitution and the American people. 



THE BURDEN OF TAXATION 

THE CONSUMERS NOW BEAR IT; 
WHY NOT THE PROFIT MAKERS? 



We are at war with Germany, and the American nation must pre- 
pare itself to bear the responsibility which war brings when its people 
declare that occasion and not desire rules the mind of the Nation. 
Besides being taxed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars as interest 
upon war bonds, the people will also be under taxation to pay the ordi- 
nary and extraordinary expenses which the Government finds it must 
pay if it is to carry on a great war with other nations. Thus the direct 
and indirect taxes will be more than doubled and we must expect that 
new forms of taxation will be laid upon the backs of the people. As 
the people of the American nation have always understood and have 
accepted the fact that, in the last analysis, the consumers bear the whole 
burden of taxation, the cost of living must rise in the same relative 
proportion as taxes are increased. 

The tariff tax upon imports and the Internal Revenue tax upon 
alcohol and tobacco, the agencies supplying governmental revenue in 
the past, are now too meager for the greater consideration of a necessary 
taxation, but, yet, will still form a part of the general plan of future taxes 
laid. At most, these two agencies, in the future, cannot be relied upon 
to provide revenues exceeding $500,000,000 annually for the support of the 
National Government. Therefore, as these two forms of taxation were 
the main reliance for governmental revenue by all past administrations 
up to and including President Taft's regime, now unimportant to the 
total amount needed, the Government finds itself confronted by tre- 
mendous problems when it attempts to raise revenues by taxation from 
other sources. Up to this time (1917) all the new taxes are so laid 
that in the last analysis the burden is borne by the consumers and not 
by the profit makers. 

True, we have the personal income taxes and the tax upon business 
profits when made by persons, co-partnerships and corporations. But, 
if an examination is made to find the reasons why we have the rapid 
rise in the costs of all commodities, sold by the business agencies which 
are taxed upon profits, comprehension answers that it is not these 
agencies, in the last analysis, which pay these taxes but the people who 
must buy at the monopoly price no matter how the costs rise from 
day to day. What is wanted by a free people is a form of taxation 
which will not permit the profit maker to shift his burden to the backs 
of the many poor and middle-class people, who, to live, should have 
food, clothing and shelter in exactly the same proportion as the few 
rich and powerful enjoy. It is unfair that the profit maker, enabled 
by government to make profits, should be permitted by law to evade 
paying taxes in proportion as he makes profits, and- that the poor con- 
sumer should be loaded down, not only by the price of an increased 
cost of living, but, added to this burden, he finds himself paying by 
taxation the full cost of government. Therefore, the tax burden is 
upon the backs of the many poor and miserable, and the few rich and 



powerful, shifting their burden of taxation to the industry and thus to 
the community, go practically free, except to buy the bonds government 
must issue to meet the extraordinary expenses of war. But, even in 
this, the poor and miserable are under taxation, as consumers, to pay 
the interest on these bonds held by the rich and powerful. This ma- 
chinery of concentration in taxation produces an undue concentration 
of wealth to but a few owners, which means that, if some principle 
of distribution is not inaugurated, all wealth produced by all would 
flow steadily to their possession. But, if distribution was written into 
the Constitution, by adding the Geometric Tax amendments, it would 
mean that either they would be compelled to pay a geometrically greater 
tax to support government, with a corresponding release of taxation to 
the producing workers, or, as the owner wills, a greater distribution of 
profits would be made to the heirs at law or for the public benefit. 
When distribution is made to the heirs at law, the workers would then 
have opportunity for higher wages, because of a greater buying power 
created within the community, and this in turn would give to the workers 
more and more of prosperity to enable them to advance toward a 
better and higher order of citizenship. 

The New York American in an editorial, published April 4th, 1917, 
made this fact perfectly clear in the following words: "We know, of 
course, the answer that will be made. You will be told that the rich 
will have to pay — that the poor pay no taxes. But that is foolish or 
ignorant talk. ALL TAXATION is finally paid by the working classes 
— by the people who produce. It ALL comes out of their earnings 
finally, in some shape. Every dollar of taxation is added to the rent, the 
cost of living, to the price of every article that the average citizen 
and his family must buy." 

THE DECEIT OF FINANCIAL TRICKERY 

In the past the personal income taxes, when the incomes are derived 
from stock shares of corporations, have been "collected at the source"; 
that is that the corporation pays the tax before declaring dividends and 
charges the amount so paid to the expense account. This, then, makes 
up part of the COST of commodities, and when the consumer buys he 
pays his tribute to taxation and the stockholder is thereby relieved pro- 
portionately. The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. McAdoo, desires that 
the words be changed when new laws are enacted, and the corporation 
shall be compelled to send a statement of facts to Washington, giv- 
ing full "information at the source," where an examination will be 
made of all personal income reports ; and from these reports the indi- 
vidual will be taxed under the income tax law.*^ 

Bonds of the corporations, representing millions of dollars, have 
been sold under what is known as the "tax free covenant." In other 
words, this means that the tax due on the interest paid to the bond- 
holder has been previously charged to the expense account of the cor- 
poration and the people have paid it as they bought what the corpora- 
tion sold. The bondholder was thus relieved from paying taxes upon 
his income, and this proposition, in an endless chain way, makes con- 
tinuously the rich ever richer and the poor ever poorer. This sort of 
financial trickery, based upon "collection at the source," has led to a 
heavy inflation in bonds sold to the public; and now the "dupes" of 
Wall Street will find to their consternation that the new plan to collect 
income taxes upon "information at the source" will force them to pay 
their allotted taxes upon the interest received from bonds, no matter 
how they may have been "duped" by consenting to accept a lower rate 
of interest when buying the bonds. 

* Included in tax law, Oct. 3d, 1917. 



How the rich and powerful class have deceived and lied in the 
returns they have made to the Government, and upon which- the tax is 
computed, was developed by discussions on the floor of the United 
States Senate, August 21st, 1917. Senator Lewis, of Illinois, specially 
brought out these facts by telling how attempts had been made to 
mislead the Senate Committee when the War Revenue Bill was under 
consideration; he said: "On no subject has that performance been 
more repeatedly dramatized than in the matter of the representation on 
incomes. There has been more ingenious lying deliberately perpe- 
trated to the face of the representatives on this Finance Committee by 
men touching their incomes than could be conceived. Men who would 
shrink from petty lying in the ordinary affairs of their lives and who 
held themselves up as worthy the approval of their fellowmen in the 
communities where they live, will come here and under the guise of 
business necessity justify a form of lying which in other forms would 
subject them to the charge of perjury and to the pains and penalties 
thereof. I may startle you to tell you that there is in the Treasury 
Department this hour established proof of $300,000,000 swindled out or 
this Government by perjury, fraud, deception and different forms of 
commercial and personal trickery under the income tax returns." 

In an article written by Senator Hiram Johnson of California and 
published by the New York Evening Mail of September 9th, 191 7, he 
said: "We who favor high taxes of war profits insist the expenses of 
war should be paid by those who profit by war; that the burden of 
taxation lies least heavily upon the great mass of our people when 
taxation can be laid upon enormous sums coined out of our misfortune 
and our nation's peril; that when the supreme maximum sacrifice is 
required of humanity, at least some sacrifice should be required of the 
wealth made out of humanity's sacrifice ; that we should not be lavish 
of our blood and tender of our dollars." 

"England took 50 per cent, of her war profits the first year, and 
we gave our business concerns 100 per cent; England took 60 per cent, 
of her war profits the second year, and we gave our people 100 per 
cent; England took 80 per cent the third year, and we— tremblingly and 
timidly — will take 31 per cent, and give to those who have made literally 
billions out of our travail and crises practically 70 per cent of this 
year's war gains. Every dollar we refuse to take to-day from those 
fabulous war profits — profits which gave the pacifists grounds for calling 
this a corporation war — must be paid ultimately by the small merchant 
and small property owner and the average citizen." 

. "To-day we have a financial reservoir upon which to draw — a reser- 
voir of war profits which the people have created by their patriotic out- 
pouring of money to finance democracy's fight The moment! war 
ceases the moment that reservoir dries. Of course those making these 
profits cry "Wait, wait, wait." They mean that we shall wait until they 
have safely, pocketed their % war profits, until the war has ended with 
unheard-of liabilities and debts upon us all. Then the full bill must be 
paid by the smail .merchant and the average property owner; and 
when that time comes the merchant, the tradesman, the farmer and the 
ordinary property* owner, as he sorrowfully gazes upon his swollen taxes, 
will wonder why he was indifferent and supine when the endeavor was 
made to lighten his burden and to compel those who profited by war to 
pay a just part of the expenses of war." 

^The earnings coming to capital and labor from the consumers, for ,, 
the year 191 7, are placed at more than $50,000,000,600. Of this vast sum : 
more thai> $io,ooo,ooo,ooq will be paid to the holders of stocks and 
bonds., These securities when issued were paid for in full by taking 
the^Jiuying power of the consumers instead of. the capitalist's cash, or 
property at cash value, at the time these securities were issued. If these 
securities represent wealth value at the present time, we must accept 



the fact that the consumers are to-day paying interest and dividends 
upon their own wealth to those who have captured it. But added to 
this violation of human justice and human rights, the present system of 
taxes forces the consumers, whether they be rich or poor, to bear the 
whole burden of taxation ; and as fully ninety per cent, of the American 
people must work continuously from the beginning to the end of human 
existence to obtain from others the rewards of labor, it means that the 
poor and miserable are practically paying the taxes and not these mas- 
ters of finance who pay no taxation upon wealth and profits, so gained 
because of ownership of watered capitalization. Under our plan for 
government ownership, limiting the dividend to ten per cent., on a 
prior lien security, basing it upon actual inventoried capital, then those 
who held such corporate capital would be secure and receive their divi- 
dends without default. These owners would then be taxed upon in- 
comes by the Geometric Tax tabulation exactly as all other persons 
would be taxed when they take a permitted advantage of our prosperity 
to make profits. No one would then be exempt from taxation, but the 
tax measurement would then be so proportionate toward all that everyone 
would be relieved from the present intolerant burden and be able to 
give to the affinities of man all that God and nature says is coming to 
the wives and children of all men, when the prime— the man — has 
selected his part and obligation to perform. 

CREATION AND MAN'S DUTY 

God made Adam. He saw that it was not good for man to be 
alone. Therefore, He took a rib from Adam's side and made a woman — 
a dependent upon Adam for support and care; and God placed his 
primal descendants under an obligation to form an equitable govern- 
ment in order to give safety and equity to their wives and children, so 
that they would be protected from the riot and anarchy of ignorant, 
wilful and selfish men. In all the centuries since Adam's time, Man 
has been the prime and the wife and children have been his affinities 
depending wholly upon him. If he does not protest against greed and 
those who found bad and impure government, and thereby fails and 
falls because he does not, or cannot, do his bounden duty as God 
and nature has so laid it upon his back, then as he falls he drags his 
innocent affinities down to the same level and into the same depths of 
desolation, misery, ruin and anarchy in which he has fallen. 

Man is a man and a woman is a woman. God and nature made 
them so ; and no contrivance of man or woman, nor any mundane or 
economic law, or laws, nor practices by them, will have the slightest 
power to change the order of God's intention concerning the obligations 
and duties of the sexes. The solution and the cure of the problem must 
come by recognizing that each sex have God-ordained duties to perform 
while fulfilling destiny upon earth, and resentment because of failure 
by man to secure the full product of his labor, or because he does not 
form an equitable government for the protection of himself and his 
dependent affinities, will be of no avail if he does not buckle down to 
secure what is coming to him from society, after society has given 
him full worth for what he has produced. If government has enacted 
laws permitting special interests to raise the cost of living faster than 
is given to him an increase in income for his labor, then it is his busi- 
ness to see that that government repeals those laws by adding amend- 
ments to the fundamental law and make it impossible for such enact- 
ments to be made. In this country the Constitution gives to Man the 
opportunity to do this, and practically places in his hands the solution 
and to obtain recognition of what is his due as a citizen and a sovereign 
to rule. Thus taxation holds the secret for bettering human existence. 



We must submit to either taxation upon consumption and thereby suffer 
and grow poor, or, by the knowledge of what the Constitution holds 
for the American citizen, place taxation upon incomes and profits in 
such a constitutional manner that will make these taxes stick where put, 
so that the average citizen would be relieved from paying unjust taxation 
and thus grow rich. 

The Geometric Tax principle, if incorporated within the Constitu- 
tion, would reverse the flow of taxation by leaving its burden rest 
where it naturally belongs — upon the citizen who has benefited by 
receiving incomes from profits gained in business enterprises, se- 
cured to him by a government ruled by a constitution installing the 
profit system and the private ownership of property. This principle in 
taxation does not tax wealth at all : Only the incomes when capital 
coming from the use of wealth gains profits for the exclusive use of 
the owner of that capital. In our larger corporations that owner of 
capital does not work at all in the business in which his money is 
invested. He only joins with others to elect the Board of Directors 
and enjoys himself until the dividends flow in. Otherwise, he rests 
content because of the security the Constitution guarantees to him. 

Therefore, the people protect his capital and not himself, and, with 
this, the laws of the State direct how the corporation must do busi- 
ness. Any legislation which will tend to disrupt his monopoly, as his 
kind have instituted, will call from him a vigorous protest. To his 
mind his future must be protected, and he instantly revolts if the 
people vote for legislation to maintain constitutional rights for their 
own protection. Corporate capital of itself can make no profits. Profits 
can only come when the people as workers rest upon the base of 
capital, and, by the combination of the two, industry is advanced, finished 
product appears and distribution to the consumers is made, and satis- 
faction is given to the two classes interested and concerned under the 
bargain entered into by both capital and labor. Labor gets its return 
in wages : The capatalist figures up costs and makes the price not upon 
costs but on the supply and demand of product. The fault of this is 
that the capitalist has the control of both the supply and demand, and, 
if the demand justifies it, he creates more capital by capitalizing the 
buying power of a distressed community. To pay interest and divi- 
dends upon this new capital, so issued, he must increase the price of 
product. Hence, no matter how he may raise wages and salaries by 
the power of his monopoly, the cost of living goes up and he practically 
confiscates all the greater sums he has paid to labor. 

RELATIVE POWERS UNDER CONTROL 

The two relative powers, corporate industrialism and congested 
wealth, a great deal more powerful and bureaucratic than are the three 
absolute powers and authorized by the Constitution, not only relative but 
concomitant to each other, are seeking to perpetuate their ruling power 
over the American people. They care not what taxes or other charges 
are laid against them if they are permitted, by the dictum of the United 
States Supreme Court and the Constitution, to retain the privilege to 
lay their supposed burden upon the backs of the poor and middle-class 
consumers. Give them the power to raise the cost of living and they 
will immediately fall into what lines the Government may mark out by 
statuary laws and decisions rendered by the courts. But this represents 
the spirit of pure confiscation practiced upon a defenseless people. The 
counter proposition advanced by the monopolist, is, that the price for 
product is made to do this very thing, so that the business established 
may have a sum to cover cost and profits. Upon what, pray? Why, 
of course, dividends upon watered capital. Whose capital is it? Why, 
of course, the buyers who have owned it by having labored and desire 



to spend it as THEY please for food, clothing, shelter and luxuries. It 
would be absurd to say that the American citizen is a serf; to deny him 
the right to spend his earnings as he pleases; that his labor and his 
money belongs to the monopolist, who, to-day, by the bureaucracy of the 
United States Supreme Court, controls the permission to work and to 
buy. This is the highest and most supreme question of the day. To 
answer it only two propositions can be entertained. Either we must 
permit the financier to capture the increment of value produced by labor 
for all time to come, or, in justice to the laborer, we must permit him 
to retain, because of the powers the laborers possess to add, amendments 
to the Constitution, the full increment of value he produces for his 
permanent upbuilding. We must expect that on this proposition selfish 
view-points will declare, by one side or the other, that this means that 
confiscation has been practiced. We believe that American citizens have 
the self-right to rule and make laws for their future safety. Therefore, 
we deny that any form of confiscation has been practiced when they 
make laws to retain what society gives them for their labor. 

The business of the capitalist is to put up honest capital to carry 
on an honest business, and we advocate that a dividend should be 
secured to him which will enable him to sell his stock share at par, 
but inversely to that belief, we also believe and hold to the thought 
that the man who had produced the value should have the superior 
right to keep it; and to give him absolute power to keep it, the 
Geometric* Tax amendments to the Constitution are advocated, so that 
no power may prevail against him to his disadvantage. This Govern- 
ment was established to give personal liberty and an equal opportunity 
to every citizen, because the Constitution makes every citizen the Sov- 
ereign to rule, and the law of nature permits every human being to 
use the power he possesses to advance his material prosperity and for 
self-preservation to his life and to all he holds dear. Isn't it then right 
and correct that every worker should interest himself in making the 
future laws, whereby he may have a brighter prospect to retain the 
right of higher wages and salaries, and, with it, a continuous lower cost 
of living? 

If our proposition is not acceptable to the workers, then, by the laws 
and morals that measure what is right from that which human con- 
science declares is wrong, there can be no escape for them but to 
follow the old lines of a slip-shod industrial democracy, the effect of 
which would be only to tighten the bonds of servitude upon them, and 
bring about the anarchy and destitution produced by the impotence of 
strikes and lockouts. Furthermore, so it is with taxation. If our 
proposition is not acceptable in the manner how National taxes should 
be laid, then, in our demand for justice, we would ask that some one 
would invent a legal non-confiscatory procedure that will not permit the 
tax-payer, now charged by government to pay a tax upon his profits, to 
shift his burden upon the backs of the consuming classes. The profit- 
maker pays the tax first: Then, shall we, the people, insist that the 
burden of taxation remain where it was put, or, shall we, as serfs of 
old, patiently bear the burden because we must buy food, clothing, 
shelter and luxuries to live? This question is pregnant with immense 
possibilities : The question must be answered now ! Not by the suffering 
of our childrens' children. 

In our chapter on Government Ownership, we advocate that the 
Government shall buy certificates representing the actual cash value 
now located in the assets of corporate industry. That dividends de- 
clared to Government would, in the same proportion as paid, release 
proportionately taxation upon citizens to provide revenue for the sup- 
port of the National Government. For control, the Government should 
own the major part of corporate securities, and the dividends as de- 
clared would give to Government all that it would require from year 



to year, so that the citizen may have relief and be free from National 
taxation for its support. Besides, the Government owning the con- 
trolling capital, would not only make for a safer investment for those 
who had saved a part of their earnings, but would tend to insure regu- 
larity and soundness to the operation of all corporate industry. 

After the dividends had been paid to Government and the corpora- 
tions, under our plan, having no National tax to pay and be subject 
only to State taxes upon realty and personal property, the rates on 
transportation, means of communication, the service of municipal utili- 
ties, cost of all commodities, and the cost of living, generally speaking, 
would all be reduced to a minimum and correspond to the postal rates 
as now established by Government. Because, if the Nation taxed the 
corporations, no matter what that tax might be, the amount paid, as a 
tax, with a profit added, too, a calculation would be made and the 
price fixed for the product. This would mean that the consumers, in 
the last analysis, would pay a higher price for commodities if the cor- 
porate machinery of business is taxed directly to pay the expenses of 
government. Therefore, under our plan, if the corporations have no 
National taxes to pay, and besides having the dividends limited to ten 
per cent, upon actual inventoried capital assets, then, of course, no 
charge could be made to the industry and thus to the community — the 
people. 

The dividends having been paid to the owners out of saved wealth, 
and the Geometric Tax measurement applied to the concentrated amount 
of profits gained, then these owners would pay the stipulated tax upon 
their dividend profits, and would have no possible chance of controlling 
power to pass what they had paid to the cost of living. This would 
reverse the tendency of continual higher costs and install the tendency of 
continual lower costs, caused by an age of progress and of a better 
civilization to make commodities and things always better and better 
as the years of enlightenment pass on. Therefore, if we let the personal 
taxes to support government remain where they are put — upon the 
backs of the profit-makers, and let the corporations remain as sound 
American machines for business enterprise and development, whereby 
our business procedure remaining untrammeled and unshackled by taxes, 
graft or any commission bureaucracy to rule whatsoever, then we, as a 
Nation, may have opportunity to compete successfully with the indus- 
trialism of autocratic Germany and other nations in the markets of 
the world. 

Furthermore, the workers of a corporation, to protect their own 
interests, would not permit this tax, the profit-makers pay, to be taken 
from their own surplus profits, as given to them if the Geometric Tax 
amendments were added to the Constitution. In other words, what we 
propose to do is to apply the "check and balance" system of government 
to corporate industrialism, whereby, no matter what selfishness and 
special privilege might want, a practical and positive distribution of 
earnings would take place in the exact proportion as the affinities were 
entitled to it. The owners of corporate actual capital, whether it be the 
Government or the private citizen, would then get their share in divi- 
dends and be forced to pay the taxes put upon them — the Government 
to transfer to its treasury all the dividends it had received, and the 
private citizen to the Government in the exact mathematical measure- 
ment as the tabulation of the Geometric Tax dictated. The workers 
would get their wages as determined by a Board of Governors, made 
up of three persons elected to the Board of Directors combined with 
three persons elected by the democratic votes of the workers them- 
selves; this Board would also have power to declare the distribution of 
surplus profits earned by them alone ; the consumers to pay no more 
than to give justice to the investing powers of capital and labor to oblige 
a society that it may live, prosper and thrive. 



THE GEOMETRIC TAX 

THE GEOMETRIC TAX AMENDMENT WOUJLD INSTITUTE, AND 
GOVERN, BY THE POWER OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION, 
AN INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATIVE CONTROL OVER ALL COR- 
PORATIONS. 



The Geometric Tax is a tax levied to reimburse gov- 
ernment for the amount of its law used to gain per- 
sonal profits ; the measurement of which is determined 
by the formula T= -£-, — the one-one-millionth of the 
square of the income equaling the governmental tax. 



CONSTITUTIONAL PHRASEOLOGY OF THE 
GEOMETRIC TAX AMENDMENTS. 

These Afford the Remedy by Their Self-Governing, 
Inherent Legal Force, and Are Logical, Prac- 
tical and Practicable. 

Copyright, 1908-1909, by John W. Batdorf. 

ARTICLE*** 

Section I. 

1. It shall be unlawful after * * * for any corporation 
to buy or to sell any commodity, or operate a utility, or to 
transact any business within or between the States, without 
previously having secured a certificate of actual inventoried 
efficient capital from the Inter-State Commerce Commission 
Court at Washington. 

2. No such certificate shall be issued to any corporation, 
except after the court's acceptance of the applicant's inven- 
tory of free capital at cash value, judged solely by the cost 
of replacing of the same. 

3. Upon this accepted certificate of capital value, the ap- 
plying corporation shall be given the right to operate its busi- 
ness within or between the States, and to maintain a price 
upon its productions which will give to its treasury a ten per 
cent, annual dividend upon its accepted inventoried capital. 

4. All excess corporate income above the 10% per annum 
distribution shall be wholly expended in maintenance of the 
cornoration's property for the public benefit, or in higher wages 



THE GEOMETRIC TAX 



for labor and lower cost of commodity or utility; otherwise, it 
must be paid in cash to the treasury of the National Govern- 
ment. 

5. The Government shall retain the power of veto as to 
excessive salaries paid to corporate officers, which shall be fixed 
by tabulation governed by the actual capital employed and be 
proportionate to the amount of annual business transacted; this 
power shall also extend to the excess of cash capital in the cor- 
porate treasury, and to any arbitrary action that may be taken 
by the corporation against the community. 

Section II. 

1. There shall be levied and collected from the annual in- 
come of each person oyer twenty-one years of age, from every 
trust estate, collecting incomes from the people, and from the 
total amount of individual centralized income, gained from in- 
vestments in American property by absent persons, for pur- 
poses of Federal taxation, in accordance with the geometrical 
tabulation based on one-one-millionth of the square of each in- 
come aforesaid. 

2. Incomes amounting to more than five hundred thousand 
dollars may be de-centralized by distribution in any manner the 
owner may elect, provided it be to the heirs at law, or for the 
public benefit, otherwise it must be turned over to the Federal 
treasury. 

3. The Congress shall have power to enforce the provisions 
of this article by appropriate legislation. 



A SUGGESTION 

For the common defense in time of war, Congress, by two- 
third vote of both Houses, shall have power, for the war period, 

to abrogate clauses Nos. 3 and 4 of section 1, Article ; 

and to pass laws to maintain a flexible scale price upon corpo- 
ration productions which will give to the Federal Government 
(the owner in part or of the whole of the prior lien securities 
representing actual capital of all corporations) such revenues 
as will make up any shortage gained by taxes upon incomes 
and from consumption ; or revenues derived from bond sales. 
All excess corporation income above the percentage so fixed by 
Government, shall be wholly expended in maintenance of the 
corporation's property for the public benefit, or in higher wages 
and salaries for labor and lower cost of commodity or utility; 
otherwise, it must be paid in cash to the treasury of the National 
Government. 

For the common defense in time of war, Congress, by two- 
third vote of both Houses, shall have power, for the war period, 

to abrogate clause No. 2 of section II, Article ; and to 

pass laws conscripting personal incomes in excess of $500,000 
to the National treasury. ____^__ 

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses 
my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this to the extent of the 
difference, is no democracy." — Abraham Lincoln. 



THE GEOMETRIC TAX 

THE GEOMETRIC TAX GOVERNED BY THIS TABULATION 
REPRESENTS THE MATHEMATICS OF THE MULTIPLICATION 
TABLE, NAMELY 2X2 ARE 4; 4 X 4 ARE 16; 40 X 40 ARE 1,600; 
400 X 400 ARE 160,000, AND SO ON WITH THE CALCULATION 
OF ALL NUMBERS 

TABULATION OF THE GEOMETRICAL CALCULATIONS AS 
APPLIED, MATHEMATICALLY, TO ESTABLISH THE GEO- 
METRIC TAX, THE INDUSTRIAL CO-HERENT RIGHT 
WITH CAPITAL, AND FOR THE EQUITABLE 
DISTRIBUTION OF INDIVIDUAL INCOMES.* 



Tax Rate 


Personal 


Taxation 


Per Cent. 


Incomes. 


to Pay. 


.01 


$100 


$0.01 


.02 


200 


.04 


.03 


300 


.09 


.04 


400 


.16 


.05 


500 


.25 


.06 


600 


.36 


.07 


700 


.49 


.08 


800 


.64 


.09 


900 


.81 


.1 


1,000 


1.00 


.2 


2,000 


4.00 


.3 


3,000 


9.00 


.4 


4,000 


16.00 


.5 


5,000 


25.00 


.6 


6,000 


36.00 


.7 


7,000 


49.00 


.8 


8,000 


64.00 


.9 


9,000 


81.00 


1. 


10,000 


100.00 


2. 


20,000 


400.00 


3. 


30,000 


900.00 


4. 


40,000 


1,600.00 


5. 


50,000 


2,500.00 


6. 


60,000 


3,600.00 


7. 


70,000 


4,900.00 


8. 


80,000 


6,400.00 


9. 


90,000 


8,100.00 


10. 


100,000 


10,000.00 


20. 


200,000 


40,000.00 


30. 


300,000 


90,000.00 


40. 


400,000 


160,000.00 


50. 


500,000 


250,000.00 



To illustrate: The one thousand dollar income or accumulated wage 
geometrically squared (1,000 multiplied by 1,000 equals 1,000,000) equals 
one million. One-one-millionth of this product is one; for two thousand 
it is four; for three thousand it is nine; for five thousand it is twenty- 
five; for ten thousand it is one hundred, and, in the same exact measure- 
ment, up to the geometrical limitation "of five hundred thousand this con- 
stant divisor, controlled solely by environment, may be mathematically 
used to declare by society what should be a right and equitable distribu- 
tion from earnings for a laborer's pension due in old age, or, what the 
exact sum should be for a Federal tax to be paid by each person upon 
incomes gained from wages, interest and profits. 

♦"The Geometric Tax," p. 13, by John W. Batdorf. 



WHAT THE GEOMETRIC TAX 
RECOGNIZES AND STRIVES FOR 



(i) That the Russian "Bolshevik" (Socialist) movement is a declared 
menace to the civilization, economics and governments established in all 
nations; specially to that of the United States. It will advance more 
conspicuously the thought of atheism introduced in literature by Kant, 
Hegel, Fichte and Marx. And, because of evidently bad economic condi- 
tions now ruling in the United States, occasioned by being governed in 
fact by the theories of Alexander Hamilton, in one word concentration, the 
American people are in danger of worshiping "False Gods," as misguided 
people have done in the past, bending the knee and making obeisance to them, 
and courting destruction to our instinctive religious observances and the 
economical and governmental construction of the State. 

(2) That the American Government should have a chance to continue 
its governing mission under the controlling natural power of distribution, 
the principle of Thomas Jefferson, now that the governing principle of 
concentration, the principle of Alexander Hamilton, is about to disappear. 
It is either the acceptance of Jefferson's principles, or, by the inexorability 
of the times, we will, perhaps, sink under the dominant principle of confisca- 
tion — Socialism representing the anarchy of democracy. 

(3) That by an Article amendment to the Constitution, we would install 
the principle of Jefferson, whereby true capital and wealth may have a 
reasonable safety with a rightful dividend for its use; to reservoir it to the 
possession of its ownership, safe but for the use of those who must work to 
live. In other words, to make of it a base for prosperity, for the American 
people to stand upon, likened to the base of the earth upon which life is 
protected from destruction. 

(4) That recognizance should be given to the fact that private business 
does not mean public business ; that the Constitution assures its inviolability ; 
that refutation must be made of the several decisons of the U. S. Supreme 
Court that the corporation is a person and that it has the same powers in 
government and in business as the natural person ; that, as the Constitution 
having no words in its text to define the powers of a corporation,: its 
regulation, the distribution of its earnings, it is now high time to correct this 
error made by the U. S. Supreme Court sitting as a bureaucracy to govern. 

(5) That our prosperity has come because that men of every stage of 
society have worked mentally and physically to draw from nature its incre- 
ment of wealth, the power representing the age of plutocracy. This places 
labor predominantly in the forefront of productivity and what it earns 
must go. under the philosophy of Americanism, to the powers which have 
created it. 

(6) That taxation should be paid by the beneficiary subject to govern- 
ment in the exact ratio and proportion as that subject has been favored 
by the powers of government to obtain from other citizens a yearly profit 
or income. That the sum of the tax shall be mathematically gained by 
computing it uoon the base of the concentrated yearly profits what the 
measurement of the one-one-millionth of the square of those profits math- 
ematically prove to be. This proposition will give to the National Govern- 
ment not less than $1,000000,000 annuallv. nossiblv a great deal more, 
dependent uoon what plan of de-centralization should be practiced subject, of 
course, to the words of the amendment as ratified to the Constitution by 
the people. Furthermore, under our Government Ownership proposition, the 
Government would receive, as the owner of corporate securities, from 
coroorations an amount of money annually exceeding $3,000,000,000 in 
additional revenue. This latter sum represents that much relief to out 
citizens in taxation by the acceptance of our plan for government ownership'. 



WHAT THE GEOMETRIC TAX MEANS 



IT MEANS ? That Socialism, when the Geometric Tax principles are a part of the 
Constitution, will have no power to turn the American people from their faith 
in God, nor their belief that they are to inherit a place in the Kingdom of God. 

IT MEANS: The preservation and sanctity of religious observances. It condemns 
the atheism and materialism of the socialist philosophy. 

IT MEANS : That the Geometric Tax promotes co-operative individual initiative 
in industry and in wealth, and, by contrast, opposes the collectivism of Socialism 

IT MEANS : That persuasion, displacing concentration, will become the natural 
governing law to maintain human justice among people of equal degree in 
sovereignty, sovereignty, when backed by an inflexible distribution. 

IT MEANS : That capitalism, instead of striving to satisfy human selfishness, will 
be eager to lend itself for the public welfare. 

IT MEANS : That labor organizations will be more anxious to please the con- 
sumers of their product than to have their minds centered upon higher wages 
and less hours. 

IT MEANS : That our industrial and agricultural workers would abhor the thought 
of direct action to obtain a recognizance of the rights fundamentally belonging 
to labor. 

IT MEANS : That labor, having then the power to conserve its own integrity, 
would inherit the fruits of labor as Abraham Lincoln foretold in his famous 
saying that "labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the 
fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not existed first. Labor 
is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration." 

IT MEANS : That capital and labor combined will then have power of initiative 
in business enterprises, free from such restrictive laws as the Sherman Anti- 
trust law; their rights must be respected in corporate industrialism, if the 
American people are to enjoy personal liberty and to have individual ambition 
to thrive and do well. 

IT MEANS: That both capital and labor will then derive Constitutional justice 
in such measurement as to make it naturally impossible for strikes or lockouts 
to occur. 

IT MEANS : That the loss of human vitality, accumulating each day as the laborer 
toils, will, in old age, be accounted and paid for in the exact ratio and pro- 
portion as he had given production to the community in his working days. 

IT MEANS : That National taxes will be paid by the profit-makers, and that they 
will have no power to transfer their burden to the backs of the consumers. 

IT MEANS : That the American people will have power, by inauguraing the 
Geometric Tax plan for Government Ownership, to relieve citizens from paying 
National taxation of an amount greater than $3,000,000,000. 

IT MEANS : That the vision of "Equal Sovereignty" with an "Equal Opportunity" 
to every citizen may come true as an actual fact, because of a Constitutional 
autocracy to govern within the lines of a democracy. 

IT MEANS : That, as Anti-Socialism is the natural defender of pure Americanism, 
it will necessarily call upon the American people supporting its cause, to give 
earnest heed to the study of the Federal Constitution, the history of the American 
Government, and the aims and purposes of the American form of Government. 

IT MEANS : That the owners of American wealth, and the great minds controlling 
industry, will be much more concerned about the safety of wealth already 
garnered, and the industry already founded, than the making of an unusual 
and immoral future profit. 

IT MEANS : The Hamiltonian Federalist Party failed in 1812 : The Government was 
stabilized under Jeffersonianism by James Madison. The Whig Party failed 
in 1852: The Government was again stabilized under Jeffersonianism by Abra- 
ham Lincoln. The concentration of political, industrial and wealth power is 
again at the brink. Jeffersonianism or Socialism, both distributing nowers in 
government, the "Lady or the Tiger," is now the "Bolsheviki" before the people. 
Which shall it be? 



Statement made before the Committee on Ways and Means, House of 
Representatives at Washington, Friday, June 14, 1918, by Mr. H. E. West, 
representing West & Haslet, oil producers, Independence, Kansas. 

"Mr. Chairman, ... we have two classes of producers ; one of them is the con- 
servative man who buys property after it is partially or completely developed, and the 
other is the prospector. The prospector goes out and tries to find a property. . . . 
When he is successful and finds a property ... it requires a larger capital than the 
average prospector has. He develops his property as far as he can and then he wants 
to sell it. . . . He is offered a price for his property ... we will say, $100,000 more 
than his cost of production. . . . Under the present law he has to pay from 40 to 60 
per cent, of that amount in income and excess profits." 

"There are some things that should be remedied. . . . Before the income tax was 
enacted, he sold the property, and the man or the corporation would prefer to buy. . . . 
He cannot do that . . . because $50,000 or $60,000 is more than he feels his share of 
the taxation ought to be. Therefore, he stops on that property and seeks a man or 
corporation that has money. He says to them : 'You pay me for the development I 
have done here, and I will make some kind of an arrangement with you whereby I 
have a percentage in the property and you take it over and you have a controlling in- 
terest.' . . . The corporation or the man of means moves on to the property and goes 
along and develops it. The property is developed, but the Government has not received 
a cent, and if there could be some adjustment or some arrangement made so that this 
tax could be reduced on sales which cause an income, it would be a benefit." 



The Geometric Tax plan offers the principle of Thomas Jefferson to re- 
adjust economic and business conditions, introduced into American life by 
the principle of CONCENTRATION to erect a moneyed power to rule. 

Mr. West should lease to a corporation all speculative oil properties on a royalty 
basis only. The profits on his lease speculation, then would have netted him a steady 
annual return rather than having it frittered away by indulging in gambling propen- 
sities. 

The corporation owned by the Government, taking the lease, would be represented 
by a capital expense account for the building of railroads, pipe lines, derricks, mining 
tools and all other property used in the development of mineral oils. On this capitali- 
zation the Government would be assured a return of ten per cent, from the people, by 
having monopoly power to make the price of oils to consumers to obtain it. 

All net surplus profits, at the end of the year, would remain with and be dis- 
tributed, in proportion to wages and salaries earned, to the workers laboring for the 
combined Government owned oil corporations ; these workers in oil production, as 
individual citizens, would then be required to pay their proportionate Geometric tax 
to the Government which had employed them. The speculator also would be required 
to pay the same proportionate tax as others do upon what he had received from royal- 
ties, but, as the tax is relatively small up to an income of $300,000, no confiscatory 
principle is involved, if he in turn is patriotic to the Government which had given him 
power to locate oil wells and to buy and sell with the security that the "obligation of 
contracts" insures to him. The Government, then, owning all corporations, would dis- 
tribute the earnings of capital and labor in the exact proportion as earned by each. 

The Government, under my thought, would class all oil properties in one separate 
division, so that it would receive ten per cent, dividend upon the concentrated capital 
employed in the oil business. Every particular line of business would be held in sepa- 
rate divisions, but, in the last analysis, one representative elected from each division 
would form a Board of Governors to center and to control all corporate business of 
the nation. 

The Government, in the sense as expressed above, then would be truly the rep- 
resentative of the people. The people all meet every four years on a November day 
either to indorse a past administration or to erect a new administration to govern th 
next four years for Democracy. Therefore, the sovereignty of the people is supreme, 
and American citizens must implicitly obey the Constitution and the Governm nt 
created under it in time of war. JOHN W. BATDORF. 



HOW SHALL WE TAX 

$ 8,000,000,00 JI 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS | 

■■P.! 

020 915 962 4 • J 



Our President, John W. Batdorf, the economist, appeared on June Ilth, 1918, 
before the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives at Wash- 
ington, and outlined his plan to raise $8,000,000,000 by taxation without hurt or 
reaction to the people. In other words, how to assess taxation so that wages and 
salaries would rise, the cost of living would fall, and how to provide safety for 
capital and wealth from confiscation. 

His plan is based upon the proposition that the National Government shall become 
the sole stockholder in all corporations. The initial start for this has already been 
taken by the Government in assuming control over railroads and shipping. Next in 
order will be the telegraph and telephone lines, express companies, coal mines, oil 
wells, and such industrial plants as will be required to prosecute the war to win. 
The common thought of the people to-day, without doubt and wanted by the people 
at large, is that these business institutions will never be returned to private owner- 
ship. We are at the cross-roads of fate ; either from this time on we advance 
towards socialism — Bolshevikism — or, toward an American form of co-operation. 

The issued capital, bonds and debts of the corporations are about $120,000,000,000. 
Before the war (1914) the Government placed this at $101,207,534,282.19. If this 
investment had been inventoried for value at that time based upon new replace- 
ment, then it would not have shown a worth of $50,000,000,000. Owing to great 
profits made in these times of war, this inventory value now, as new, would be 
about $75,000,000,000. 

Under clauses 1 and 18, supported by clauses 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16, all of 
section 8, Article 1, of the Constitution, Congress, with the consent of the President, 
has power to take over corporate property in time of war and authorize an issue of 
bonds at four per cent for the prior lien securities established by said inventory. 
After the war the people can make this action good and inflexible by adding an 
amendment to the Constitution. This proposal would give to our Government a 
monopoly over all corporate productions. It would still permit the citizen to operate 
private business as founded by the Constitution and to gain unlimited profits. By 
fixing ten per cent as the dividend upon the inventoried value of corporations, the 
Government would obtain an income from corporations of $7,500,000,000 — $3,000,000,000 
to pay the interest at four per cent on $75,000,000,000 and six per cent, or $4,500,000,000, 
to turn over to the National treasury. This would save the people that amount in 
taxation. 

The Geometric Tax, proposed by Mr. Batdorf, will give to the Government 
$1,500,000,000 in revenue, and taxes will be laid in every way proportionate as each 
citizen causes expense to our Government to keep people in harmony and free from 
anarchy. The one-one-millionth of the square of incomes would then be the tax 
imposed upon all citizens. The tax on $1,000 would be $1. On $10,000, $100 — on 
$100,000, $10,000 — on $500,000, $250,000. In other words, drop your hundreds of your 
income receipt and multiply 1x1 — $1 ; 10 x 10 — $100; 100 x 100 — $10,000; 500x500 — 
$250,000. All taxes on incomes can be quickly ascertained by using the Geometric 
Tax tabulation. All other systems tend to confound the mind of ordinary citizens. 
To obtain $2,000,000,000 more — $8,000,000,000 in all — is novo the problem befoi^ 
Congress and the people to solve. For this purpose we offer a suggestion to our 
proposed amendments to the Constitution in our book, "THE FIRST HORROR 
OF THE WAR" which would give Congress, if enacted, the power in time of 
war to use a flexible scale price laid upon corporation commodities sold to the 
people. By raising the proposed dividend to thirteen per cent, on inventoried value 
of corporations, instead of ten per cent., the corporations, as an agency for the 
Government, would collect from the people upon commodities already consumed 
net revenue of $6,750,000,000, making, with the $1,500,000,000, collected by having 
the Geometric Tax placed on personal incomes, fully $8,250,000,000. 

AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL ALLIANCE, 
117 W. 132d St., New York City. 



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